Universities partner with IBM to give students access to advanced technologies.

The
Yale School of Management, in New Haven, Conn., has partnered with IBM to
develop coursework that teaches MBA students analytics skills. Students at the
school’s Center for Customer Insights, for example, are learning to take
customer opinions from the Web (such as social media sites and company blogs),
analyze that data and discover trends to improve customer service and marketing
campaigns.

“With
social media, businesses are increasingly realizing that the strategic use of
this data could be important for businesses,” says K. Sudhir, professor of
marketing and director of the Yale China India Consumer Insights Program.

Sudhir’s
students analyzed Intuit’s TurboTax Website to determine the biggest problems
facing users, in terms of tax return and software questions. After completing
their analysis, the students advised Intuit on the best way to restructure the
Website, so users can more easily get the best answers to their questions.

Yale’s
Center for Customer Insights, which is a member of the IBM Academic Initiative,
receives free access to IBM technology, as well as course materials, training and
curriculum development.

Touching
the Cloud

Pace
University’s School of Computer Science and Information Systems, in New York
City, is one of 20
colleges using the IBM Academic Skills Cloud, which provides free development
tools and software over the cloud. This is giving students hands-on experience
with cloud computing.

Students
in Christelle Scharff’s “Concepts and Structures of Internet Programming” class
learn about database concepts, fundamentals of programming languages,
networking, Web application architectures, and grid and cloud computing. In the
past, her students had to install and configure software, development tools and
operating systems on their own computers. Now, they simply log on and access
the software from the cloud.

“Our
students can access the software from wherever they are,” says Scharff, an
associate professor of computer science. “Cloud computing is something they’ve
heard about, but now they are interacting with it and are more productive.”